Immaculate Conception
Second Sunday of Advent (C)
Today, I am faced with an interesting dilemma. Today is the feast of the Immaculate Conception, with the Second Sunday of Advent following along right behind it. What’s a blogger to do? I’ll try blending elements of both into this post and see how it works.
In this Sunday’s Gospel reading, Luke gives us an elaborate introduction to John the Baptist, locating the beginning of John’s ministry by reference to the political leaders of the time. John the Baptist is in the region of the Jordan River, proclaiming “a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins”. This, Luke tells us, is in fulfillment of a quote he gives from the prophet Isaiah.
This quote resembles the reading from Baruch from this Sunday’s Mass. Isaiah announces a time when “every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low. The winding roads shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth, and all flesh shall see the salvation of God“.
This quote, as well as the Baruch reading, was originally intended for the people of Israel who were in exile in Babylon. God promises them that he would return them to their own land, the Land of Promise. However, in John the Baptist’s time, the people were not in exile – not in a geographic sense, at least. They lived in the Land of Promise. Nevertheless, John the Baptist speaks to them as though there were in exile.
This is not all. John has deliberately chosen to live and preach near the Jordan River. When the Lord led the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt to the Land of Promise, the very last stage of that journey was the crossing of the Jordan River. John the Baptist, then, considers the people as being still in exile in a sense – still in slavery – but announces that their liberation is near and that their true exile is at an end. How are they in exile? How will their homecoming come about?
For this, we need to rewind our story all the way back to Genesis. We look at the first reading for the liturgy of the Immaculate Conception. Our first parents have just sinned and broken faith with God. They perceive God drawing near, so they try to hide. They feel vulnerable, exposed, ashamed, naked – in other words, guilty. God calls out to them. “Where are you?”
Where are they?
God asks this question for their benefit, not for his own. He wants them to stop and see where they are now – where their sin has brought them. They admit that something is wrong, which is why they hid, but they cannot take any responsibility for it nor do they seek forgiveness for it. Each blames another. They cannot bring themselves to see their state as it truly is, let alone admit it to God or to themselves. Where are they? They are now in exile – exile from God (in that they no longer fully trust him), exile from one another (in that they blame each other), and exile from creation (in that survival will become much harder and involve much more painful work). Sin causes division, isolation, even paranoia. We feel isolated in a hostile world.
Where are we?
The season of Advent invites us to ask that very question. We are invited to identify with Adam and Eve after their sin, and with the Israelites weeping in exile by the streams of Babylon. In fact, unless we can place ourselves there in some way, Advent will make little sense for us. It will have little to offer us. Advent insists, with John the Baptist, that we are in exile. It also insists, with John, that our exile is at an end.
Where are we, then? How are we in exile?
Our own sins can make us feel as though we are in exile from God, from other people, and from ourselves. We become ashamed and defensive. We may seek scapegoats to blame for our failures. We may feel depressed and unworthy of the love of others. We may feel anxious and restless without knowing why. We may not like even our own company. God may feel like a threat or a symbol of our guilty consciences. We may not know where to turn.
We may feel in exile because of the sins of others against us. Because we belong to this or that group, we may find ourselves ostracized, oppressed, abused, or considered as second-class citizens at best. We may have been seriously abused in some way as children or young people. Someone we trusted with our very hearts may have broken faith.
Exile happens in other ways. Like the “sinful woman” in Luke’s Gospel, we may regret our past sins and seek with all our hearts to return to the Lord. Yet, other people will not let go of our failures or give us a chance to return. Like the older brother in the parable of the Prodigal Son, we may feel that we’ve sacrificed so much for God. And now, some sinner is getting in “on the cheap” by being shown mercy and forgiveness. So, we exile ourselves.
Exile happens in ways that have little or nothing to do with sin as such. It may be some illness, some injury, some difficult physical or psychological condition that keeps us from participating fully in the life of the community. It may be the effects of aging. It may be the fear of various dangers – real and imagined.
Exile also happens when we are doing our best to be faithful to God’s calling to us. Our sincere efforts at faithfulness may bring us ridicule or rejection from some. Others will insist that the Spirit can only blow where they will. People who have become comfortable with spiritual laziness will not appreciate any reminder that their lives could be much more than they are.
If we look at ourselves honestly and carefully, many of us have experienced some sense of being in exile. We may wonder if we have been abandoned. However, Advent announces hope to all who find themselves in exile. God has not been idle. God has been preparing a hope for us all. God calls Abraham to leave his homeland and live in a strange land – as though he were in exile – with the promise that God would make of his descendants a great nation, and that in him, all the communities of the earth would find blessing. God slowly reveals himself to his people through their successes and their failures, gradually setting the stage for the appearance of one who could give a complete “yes” to him.
This “yes” begins with Mary. God preserves her from any taint of sin from the first moment of her existence so that she might be able to give a complete “yes” to him. When the time had come, the angel Gabriel is sent to Mary to announce to her what her true vocation was. Through this announcement, God is implicitly asking Mary the same question he asked our first parents. “Where are you? Are you with me? Can you trust your life to me?” Unlike our first parents, Mary responds with a complete “Here I am”: “Let it be done to me according to your will”.
Jesus is born, but as someone in exile, as a symbol of his mission to approach us in our exile and bring us home. There is no room for Mary and Joseph at the inn of Bethlehem. Later, they have to flee to Egypt to save the infant Christ. In his ministry, Jesus is constantly bringing in the exiles: healing infirmities and diseases, forgiving sins, even bringing the dead to life. He himself would face the ultimate exile – rejection by the leaders of his own people, crucifixion and death. Then, his resurrection would be the ultimate sign that, in Jesus, our exile is ended. No exile, even death itself, is hopeless. The Lord meets us even there. The Lord leads us home, even now.
If we carry the burden of our own sins, the Lord comes to us in this exile to offer forgiveness. If we carry the pain of being sinned against, the Lord offers us healing and the grace that transforms the very hurt into a means of grace for ourselves and others. If it is a physical or psychological disability that exiles us, the Lord who took upon himself that same disability on the Cross is there, inviting us to be with him at Gethsemane, at Calvary – as we have some idea of what that is like – and offers us community and joy with him even in that disability. If we have been exiled because of our faithfulness to the Lord, we are also one with him as he is condemned and put to death. Just as we have shared this with him, so, too, will we share with him resurrection. So, too, will we be made part of his own family – from which nothing can exile us except our own sins.
So, where are you? Where am I? Do we know that we are in exile? Do our hearts long for something more, even if we seem to have all we might need? Or, even if that “more” seems impossible to us now? Through Advent, the Lord reminds us that our exile is at an end. He has seen our suffering. He has remembered us. He has acted to heal and save us, and to gathers into his own family, the Church. The night nears an end. The exile is long spent. The day draws near. Once we say – and keep saying every day, like Mary – “Let it be done to me according to your will”, our exile is already ending. Our true home is revealed to us. We are already there, in a sense, even now. One day, we will be there completely.
Where are you? Here I am. Take me as your own, Lord. Lead on. I will follow.
